Today in history
On Sept. 23, 63 B.C., Caesar Augustus, who would become the first Roman emperor, was born.
In 1642 Harvard College in Cambridge, Mass., held its first commencement.
In 1779 the American warship Bon Homme Richard, commanded by John Paul Jones, defeated the HMS Serapis off the English coast in the Revolutionary War after Jones reportedly declared, “I have not yet begun to fight.”
In 1780 English spy John Andre was captured with papers revealing Benedict Arnold’s plot to surrender West Point.
In 1800 educator William McGuffey, creator of a series of readers used among elementary school pupils for generations, was born in Pennsylvania.
In 1806 the expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark returned to St. Louis from the Pacific Northwest.
In 1846 the planet Neptune was discovered by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle.
In 1889 journalist Walter Lippmann was born in New York.
In 1938 a time capsule scheduled to be opened in the year 6939 was buried on the grounds of the World’s Fair in New York.
In 1949 President Harry Truman announced evidence of the Soviet Union’s first detonation of a nuclear device. Also in 1949 rock star Bruce Springsteen was born in Freehold, N.J.
In 1950 Congress adopted the Internal Security Act, providing for registration of communists. (The law was later ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.)
In 1957 nine black students at Little Rock Central High School were forced to withdraw because of a mob outside.